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Your weekly Dose of Spurgeon

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from the lifetime of works from the Prince of Preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The following excerpt is from The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, volume 26, sermon number 1,541, "Unprofitable servants."

"In what way can we have profited God?"

Eliphaz has well said, “Can a man be profitable unto God, as he that is wise may be profitable unto himself? Is it any pleasure to the Almighty, that thou are righteous? or is it gain to him that thou makest thy ways perfect?”

If we have given to God of our substance, is he our debtor? In what way have we enriched him to whom all the silver and gold belongs? If we have laid our lives out with the devotion of martyrs and missionaries for his sake, what is that to him, whose glory fills the heavens and the earth? How can we dream of putting the Eternal in debt to us?

The right spirit is to say with David, “O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord: my goodness extendeth not to thee; but to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent, in whom is all my delight.” How can a man place his Maker under an obligation to him? Let us not dote so blasphemously.

 Dear brethren, we ought to recollect that whatever service we have been able to render has been a matter of debt. I hope our morality is not fallen so low that we take credit to ourselves for paying our debts. I do not find men in business priding themselves and saying, “I paid a thousand pounds this morning to such an one.” “Well, did you give it to him?” “Oh no, it was all owing to him.” Is that any great thing?

Have we come to such a low state of spiritual morals that we think we have done a great deal when we give to God His due? “It is he that made us and not we ourselves.” Jesus Christ has bought us: “we are not our own,” for we are “bought with a price.”

As for myself, I am compelled to say with solemn truthfulness that I am not content with anything I have ever done. I have half wished to live my life over again, but now I regret that my proud heart allowed me to so wish, since the probabilities are that I should do worse the second time.

Whatever grace has done for me I acknowledge with deep gratitude; but so far as I have done anything myself, I beg pardon for it. I pray God to forgive my prayers, for they have been full of fault. I beseech him to forgive even this confession, for it is not as humble as it ought to be; I beseech him to wash my tears and purge my devotions, and to baptize me into a true burial with my Saviour, that I may be quite forgotten in myself and only remembered in him.

Ah, Lord, thou knowest how far we fall short of the humility we ought to feel. Pardon us in this thing. We are all of us unprofitable servants, and if thou shouldst judge us by the law we must be cast away.

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